A Literary Critique of Richard Dawkins’s The Selfish Gene

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Nilsen 0 Richard Dawkins’ The Selfish Gene – en litterær lesning, av Helene Nilsen

Denne masteroppgaven tar sikte på å lese den populærvitenskapelige klassikeren The Selfish Gene¹ på dens egne premisser, med fokus på representasjon og tekstlige strategier. The Selfish Gene kan klassifiseres som ’public science’ fordi den både populariserer vitenskapelige konsepter for et bredt publikum, og samtidig henvender seg til kollegaer innen naturvitenskapene med det Dawkins beskriver som et nytt perspektiv på evolusjonsteori.

Innen enkelte biologiske forskningsmiljøer blir The Selfish Gene regnet som en milepæl i evolusjonsteori idet den markerer skiftet fra ”gruppeseleksjon” tanken om at naturlig seleksjon fungerer på gruppenivå, til ”genseleksjon”.

Denne analysen vurderer ikke den sannhetsgehalten i det vitenskapelige fundamentet som The Selfish Gene bygger på. Ei heller kan lesningen klassifiseres som ”moralsk” eller ”politisk” – idet den ikke i videre grad tar stilling til hvorvidt begrepet ”egoisme” bærer med seg moralske implikasjoner, og heller ikke argumenterer for at Dawkins gjennom boken promoterer sitt personlige politiske syn. Disse aspektene har blitt, og blir stadig, utførlig diskutert. Videre dreier lesningen ikke rundt spørsmål som ”Finnes det objektiv sannhet?”

Denne analysen kan snarere leses som et forsøk på å innta et perspektiv løsrevet fra den polemiske motsetningen mellom C. P. Snows ”to kulturer” med spørsmålet: Hvordan kan litterære leseteknikker applikeres konstruktivt på popularisert vitenskap? Oppgavens første kapittel tar utgangspunkt i Foucaults begrep ”forfatterfunksjonen” og diskuterer et utvalg forskjellige, og til dels motstridende lesninger av The Selfish Gene. De to følgende kapitlene utgjør nærlesningen av boken.

Kapittel 2 fokuserer på bokens fundamentale strukturelle strategier som personifisering/besjeling av gener og organismer (så vel som disses ”avsjeling”). I dette kapittelet blir også konseptualiseringen av genet, eller replikatoren, i The Selfish Gene undersøkt, sammen med den narrative fremstillingen av genetisk seleksjon.

Kapitel 3 tar for seg de forskjellige stemmene som kommer til uttrykk i Dawkins’

argumentasjon, både i teksten og i fotnoter/forord, og diskuterer hvordan disse, sammen med forfatterfunksjonen, bidrar til instruere lesning og kan sies å konstruere en ideell leser i teksten. Videre belyses bruken av analogi i fremstillingen av det genetiske rasjonale som teksten etablerer.

Til slutt legges analysen til grunn for en diskusjon av hvilket normativt vitenskapssyn The Selfish Gene kan sies å formidle, og av hvordan teksten kan forstås som en lesning av naturlige fenomener.

1 Først utgitt i 1976, til norsk i 2002 ved Arne Hem: Det egoistiske genet

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Nilsen 1

Eng 350 Spring 2012 Helene Nilsen

Supervisor: Randi Koppen

Co-supervisor: Jan Reinert Karlsen Department of Foreign Languages

Popular Science – Common Ground

A Literary Critique of Richard Dawkins’s The Selfish Gene

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Acknowledgements

In the process of exploring the foreign ground of scientific writings, I have encountered a number of problems, and I would like to thank the people who have made this thesis possible.

First of all, I would not have come to begin this project if it had not been for my supervisor, Randi Koppen, who saw a potential in the project while it was still only a vague idea in the spring 2011, and agreed to supervise the work. Furthermore, I greatly appreciate her infallible reliability in terms of always making herself available, for checking far-fetched ideas and for always asking the difficult questions rather than providing conclusive answers. Also, I would like to thank co-supervisor Jan Reinert Karlsen for offering his assistance; his scientific competence has been indispensable, particularly in the initial phases of this project, as well as has his general academic enthusiasm.

Erik Tonning deserves thanks for taking the time to read drafts and providing constructive and knowledgeable criticism. So do my good friends Oda Tvedt and Karen Søilen, for reading, commenting and for their general encouragement. I have also benefited from the Work in Progress Seminars arranged by The Department of Foreign Languages:

thanks to staff and students for fruitful perspectives, critical questions, mutual confusion and motivating problematization.

Finally, I would like to thank my Love Chris for support, companionship and for generally making life easier in this mutual Time of Thesis.

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Introduction:

I. Public Science: A Contextual Framework

The purpose of this thesis is to employ reading techniques from literary criticism in a reading of Richard Dawkins’s work of popular science The Selfish Gene, first published in 1976, and generally considered the breakthrough of his authorship. Richard Dawkins, currently professor Emeritus teaching Evolutionary Biology and Science Literacy at the New College of Humanities in London, has an impressive track-record and a virtually unparalleled reputation as a mediator of science. He has made and participated in numerous TV-series promoting science as well as giving lectures and participating in the public debate. From 1995 until 2008, Dawkins held the professorship of Public Understanding of Science at Oxford UniversityHis long list of publications includes The Extended Phenotype (1982), The Blind Watchmaker, (1986), Unweaving the Rainbow (1998), the collection of essays, A Devil’s Chaplain (2003) and The God Delusion (2006).

Although The Selfish Gene was published in the 1970s, and thus not as a part of Dawkins’s position as promoter of science, it can be situated within the genre of ‘public science’.² Elizabeth Leane, in her book Reading Popular Physics, Disciplinary Skirmishes and Textual Strategies, observes a distinction between ‘pop science’ referring to any representation of science in the popular culture, such as science fiction series and so forth, and

2 Leane, Elizabeth: Reading Popular Physics, Disciplinary Skirmishes and Textual Strategies, Ashgate Publishing Limited, Hampshire and Burlington 2007, 8

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‘popular science,’ which may refer to ‘public science’ or ‘public understanding of science’³. Leane cites Frank Turner⁴ and his definition of public science as “the body of rhetoric, argument and polemic” produced by ‘public scientists’ in the process of “’justifying their activities to the political powers and other institutions,’.”⁵

The genre of ‘public science’ and the notion of ‘public scientists’ are connected to what Leane refers to as the “popularization boom of the 1990s.”⁶ In 1995, two books were published which addressed the same phenomenon. In the UK, John Carey edited the anthology The Faber Book of Science.⁷ In the introduction, he writes:

Fortunately for this anthology … popular science has improved immensely in the later twentieth century. Writers like … Stephen Jay Gould, Peter Medawar, Stephen Hawking ... and Richard Dawkins have transformed the genre, combining expert knowledge with an urge to be understood, and bridging intelligibility gap to delight and instruct huge readerships. In the process, they have created a new kind of late twentieth century literature, which demands to be recognized as a separate genre, distinct from the old literary forms, and conveying pleasures and triumphs quite distinct from theirs.⁸

This separate genre may be productively categorized as ‘public science’; professional science written in an accessible language aimed at a general readership, thus both entertaining and informing the public. In the USA, John Brockman edited a collection of interviews with

‘public scientists,’ including Richard Dawkins, under the title The Third Culture.⁹ The title explicitly refers to C. P. Snow and his Rede lecture, “The Two Cultures” from 1959¹⁰ where he polemically depicted a state of mutual ignorance between the “two polar groups” –

‘physical scientists’ and ‘literary intellectuals’ the latter of which “incidentally while no one

3 Ibid

4 Frank Turner was John Hay Whitney Professor of History at Yale University

5 Leane, Reading Popular Physics 8

6 Ibid

7 Carey, John (ed) The Faber Book of Science, Faber and Faber, Ltd, London, 1995

8 Ibid xiii

9Brockman, John: The Third Culture, Touchstone, New York, 1995, 27

10 Snow, C. P. “The Two Cultures” Published by Cambridge University Press, 1959, http://s-f- walker.org.uk/pubsebooks/2cultures/Rede-lecture-2-cultures.pdf

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Nilsen 6 was looking [had taken to] referring to themselves as 'intellectuals' as though there were no others.”¹¹ While Snow proposed a potential third culture, Brockman’s Third Culture does not correspond to this suggestion:

In Snow’s third culture, the literary intellectuals would be on speaking terms with the scientists. Although I borrow Snow’s phrase, it does not describe the third culture he predicted. Literary intellectuals are not communicating with scientists. Scientists are communicating directly with the general public ... what traditionally has been called

“science” has today become “public culture.”¹²

In Brockman’s Third Culture, then, the contributors are seen as redefining the conception of culture altogether, inscribing ‘public scientists’ as the new intellectuals in what appears to be a cultural revolution, a democratization-process of knowledge distribution:

Throughout history, intellectual life has been marked by the fact that only a small number of people have done the serious thinking for everybody else. What we are witnessing is a passing of the torch from one group of thinkers, the traditionally literary intellectuals, to a new group, the intellectuals of the emerging third culture.¹³

The Third Culture ‘manifesto’ furthermore represents a literal understanding of the battle of

‘two cultures’ presumably resulting in victory and defeat on the part of the combatants: “The Third Culture consists of those scientists and other thinkers in the empirical world who, through their work and expository writing, are taking the place of the traditional intellectual in rendering visible the deeper meanings of our lives, redefining who and what we are.”¹⁴ The

‘passing of the torch,’ and the notion that Third Culture thinkers are ‘taking the place of literary intellectuals’ suggest that there is room for only one point of view from which the questions of ‘who and what we are’ may be defined and answered; it is Snow’s polemical device of a battle of ‘two cultures’ taken to its literal extreme.

11 Ibid 2

12 Brockman, The Third Culture 18

13 Ibid 19

14 Ibid 17

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Nilsen 7 This somewhat aggressive attitude should be seen in the context of the so-called Science Wars which was largely played out in USA during the 1990s, culminating in the famous Sokal-hoax in 1996, where Alan Sokal, Professor of Physics at New York University, succeeded in publishing a gibberish article in the academic journal Social Text, thus allegedly

‘disrobed’ postmodern theorists as ‘intellectual imposters’.¹⁵ The debate between representatives of the ‘soft’ and the ‘hard sciences’ was, as the term suggests, heated and rather counterproductive in that it mainly served to confirm and deepen the gap between these two generalizations of academic traditions. In the process, representatives of the ‘soft sciences’ were to some extent made synonymous with ‘constructivists’. As Leane comments,

“it appears that both constructivist critics and those who defend science against constructivism often resort to building their arguments around a caricature of their opponent’s view”.¹⁶

Richard Dawkins arguably advocates the Third Culture ‘manifesto’ in his essay

“Postmodernism Disrobed” which was first published in Nature Magazine in 1998,¹⁷ and reprinted in Dawkins’s essay-collection A Devil’s Chaplain in 2003:

Suppose you are an intellectual impostor with nothing to say, but with strong ambitions to succeed in academic life, collect a coterie of reverent disciples and have students around the world anoint your pages with respectful yellow highlighter. What kind of literary style would you cultivate? Not a lucid one, surely, for clarity would expose your lack of content.¹⁸

Dawkins’s criticism is seemingly directed towards American postmodern theorists: “how shall we know whether modish French 'philosophy', whose disciples and exponents have all but taken over large sections of American academic life, is genuinely profound or the vacuous

15 Dawkins, Richard “Postmodernism Disrobed” from A Devil’s Chaplain 2004 (2003) 48-53

16 Leane 2007, 77

17 Nature, No 394, 9th of July 1998, 141-143

18 Dawkins, “Postmodernism Disrobed” 48

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Nilsen 8 rhetoric of mountebanks and charlatans?”¹⁹ Leaving ‘philosophy’ in quotation suggests that the criticism is not only directed towards the ‘disciples and exponents’ of French philosophy, but aims to devaluate French philosophy represented by Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida as sham intellectualism. Similarly, Cambridge University is placed in a ridiculous light because it “saw fit to give Jacques Derrida an honorary degree.”²⁰ The prominent position of this ‘modish philosophy’ seemingly justifies the annihilation of a school of thought, in the place of an approach criticising specifically defined problems of a mode of discourse. In this generalization, the postmodern philosophic jargon becomes the counterpoint to an ideal clear- thinking scientific discourse. Within this paradigm, the notion of ‘public science’ and of

‘public scientists’ communicating scientific ideas in a clear and accessible language can be seen as a deliberate effort to counteract excessive use of academic jargon.

II. Science and Literature: The Selfish Gene as Public Science

Although The Selfish Gene, as mentioned, was written in 1976 and thus cannot be said to promote Brockman’s Third Culture as such, the genre features of a type of public science are evident in the preface to the first edition, where Dawkins reflexively dedicates the book to

“three imaginary readers”²¹:

First, the general reader, the layman. ... I have worked hard to try and popularize some subtle and complicated ideas in non-mathematical language, without losing their essence. I do not know how far I have succeeded in this, nor how far I have succeeded in another of my ambitions: to try and make the book as entertaining and gripping as its subject matter deserves ...

19 Ibid 53

20 Ibid

21 The Selfish Gene xxi

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Nilsen 9 My second imaginary reader was the expert. He has been a harsh critic, sharply drawing in his breath at some of my analogies and figures of speech. His favourite phrases are ‘with the exception of’; ‘but on the other hand’; and ‘ugh’. I listened to him attentively, and even completely rewrote one chapter entirely for his benefit, but in the end I have had to tell the story my way ... Yet my greatest hope is that even he will find something new here; a new way of looking at familiar ideas perhaps; even stimulation of new ideas of his own ...

The third reader I had in mind was the student, making the transition from layman to expert ... For the student who has already committed himself to zoology, I hope that my book may have some educational value ... ²²

The lay-reader, of course, represents the popular appeal of the book. The act of popularization, according to Leane, mediates between different communities in diverse ways:

In a basic sense, it translates scientific ideas so that they become accessible to lay-readers; “it is a communication from an expert to a reader outside of his/her specialist field.”²³ In this process, “scientists come into immediate contact with the tools of the literary trade.”²⁴ Popularization as translation of established scientific concepts becomes a creative process opening for a range of literary devices. In this sense it may be seen as a liberation from the somewhat rigid conventions of professional scientific papers, such as the use of the passive voice and the so-called IMRAD-model consisting of Introduction, Methods, Results and Discussion.²⁵ The translation of science into an accessible language opens for a mediation between science and literature.

Dr. Paola Spinozzi, Senior Lecturer in English Literature at the University of Ferarra, comments on this process in her essay “Representing and Narrativizing Science”²⁶:

Translating in accessible or creative ways what has been defined in scientific terms proper entails actively taking part in the production of and response to scientific knowledge. Multiple forces work together dynamically: the exposition of scientific methods and theories through explanation and argumentation; narrativizing and

22 Ibid xxi – xxii

23 Ibid 3-4

24 Ibid 4

25 Hurwitz Brian and Paola Spinozzi, Eds: Discourses and Narrations in the Biosciences, V&R Unipress, Goettingen, 2011, 14

26 Spinozzi, Paola: “Representing and Narrativizing Science”: Hurwitz and Spinozzi 2011, 30-60

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Nilsen 10 fictionalization through different modes of emplotment and reference to characters;

self-reflexivity and meta-discourse, evidenced in a conscious use of language as a medium that transforms scientific knowledge in representation.²⁷

Spinozzi points out how literary strategies such as narrativation are closely linked to fictionalization, and the creative process of translation has the potential of ‘transforming scientific knowledge’.

Dawkins’s expert reader, however, suggests that this is not merely a translation of

‘what has been defined in scientific terms proper’; it is also conveying new scientific perspectives to other experts. Thus, the lay-reader is invited into the realm of science in the making. The expert reader in a sense warrants for scientific quality: ‘he has been a harsh critic,’ and his presence establishes an authority of the book, demanding to be taken seriously.

The essential focus in the field of Science and Literature is that of representation, and this is also the focus of my thesis. This perspective, however, does not mean ‘reducing’

scientific language to ‘fiction’, as Charlotte Sleigh points out in her book Literature and Science²⁸:

[M]etaphors and images act as frames for knowledge. They allow us to understand scientific ideas, and they actively affect our understanding. As such, scientific facts are always embedded in their representation, a phenomenon which is in large part subjective and literary or artistic … Only when they have words and images attached to them are they meaningful to us – and these words and meanings bring along a whole host of allusions, history and connotations that themselves become part of the representation as the science is further developed … [T]he argument about representation does not state that science is ‘merely fiction’. Rather, it recognizes the contingent construction of scientific representation and the embedding of its symbols in the language and culture of its time.²⁹

27 Ibid 55

28 Sleigh, Charlotte, Literature and Science, Palgrave Macmillan, Hampshire 2011

29 Ibid 5-6

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Nilsen 11 III. Motivation, Difficulties and Methodological Approach

My own initial motivation for this thesis was a vague feeling of discomfort, brought on by public science mediation such as the Norwegian TV-series Hjernevask,³⁰ which polemically juxtaposed the ideas of ‘soft sciences’ with the facts of the ‘hard sciences’, and Richard Dawkins’s TV-series The Genius of Charles Darwin,³¹ where evolutionary theory and natural selection are polemically presented in a scientific, social and philosophic context. On the one hand, the polemical note struck me as unjustified, while on the other, the productions rested on the authority of scientific fact, which it was not my prerogative to refute. The approach to science that these TV-series offered seemed on the one hand to me to trespass into the realms of metaphysics particularly when methods of the ‘soft sciences’ were contrasted to the verifiable evidence of physical science and these were used to explain social phenomena. The way physical evidence was presented suggested that interpretation and representation was downplayed, as if scientific evidence, as it were, spoke for themselves. On the other hand, the notion that the physical sciences are concerned with a material reality rather than with language and interpretation is prevalent, also in academic communities. Still, I had a feeling that the TV-series somehow abused the authority that reference to verifiable evidence gives.

On this background I attended the two courses at the University of Bergen, organized by the Centre for the Studies of Sciences and the Humanities and the English Department respectively. One was Human: Nature and Culture³², offering a series of lectures by

30 Direct translation: Brainwash, broadcasted on NRK 1 during the Spring of 2010 and hosted by the Norwegian comedian Harald Eia, produced by Harald Eia and Martin Ihle

31 Broadcasted on NRK2 in January 2009, written and presented by Dawkins, Richard, produced by Russel Barnes and Dan Hillman, distributed by British Channel 4 and Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science

32 Dannelsesmodul, VIT 210: Menneske: Natur og Kultur, coordinated by Jan Reinert Karlsen

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Nilsen 12 representatives from the humanities as well as evolutionary biologists, thus encountering science in a more formal setting. In this forum, and through discussion with fellow students, I began to understand that science is not a hermetically closed sphere, but may be productively approached and debated. Subsequently, I attended the course Science and Literature,³³ where I was introduced to Gillian Beer’s impressive work Darwin’s Plots³⁴ in which Darwin’s On the Origin of Species³⁵ is subjected to literary analysis and situated in a cultural context. The book explores the relationship between thought and language, between science and its representation, and demonstrates how imagination and metaphor can play important parts in the creation of scientific theory in the initial phase when “a fact is not quite a scientific fact at all.”³⁶ Beer’s tour de force demonstrates how a literary reading may indeed function productively in illuminating how language constraints and contributes to scientific thinking, and how the metaphors of scientific representation may gain a life of their own in the encounter with the public. Her analysis, rather than ‘disrobing’ scientific representation, serves to open up the text and, by demonstrating its many layers of potential meaning, shows how scientific representation may come to signify. Beers offers the crucial insight that:

“One’s relationship to ideas depends significantly on whether one has read the works which formulate them. Ideas pass more rapidly into the state of assumptions when they are unread.

Reading is an essentially question-raising procedure.”³⁷ Beer’s reading thus operates outside of the somewhat restricting construction of ‘the two cultures’.

From this starting-point, I decided to make Richard Dawkins’s The Selfish Gene the subject of my thesis, and to use Beer’s Darwin’s Plots as a methodological framework. This seemed like a workable prospect, since both writers are concerned with evolution and both

33 By Randi Koppen, Fall 2010

34 Beer, Gillian: Darwin’s Plots, 3^rd ed. Cambridge University Press, 2009 (1983) 4 (Beer’s italics)

35 Darwin, Charles, The Origin of Species, (1859), Oxford University Press, 2008

36 Beer Darwin’s Plots 2

37 Ibid 4 (Beer’s italics)

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Nilsen 13 address a general readership as well as other experts. Two problems may be distinguished in my initial approach. One was practical: Beer’s historical approach was not directly transferable to a reading of The Selfish Gene, because the scientific ideas the book promotes are still subject to scientific debate. The publication history of The Selfish Gene testifies to its prevailing relevance: The original edition was published in 1976, followed by a second edition in 1989 featuring two additional chapters and a new preface as well as explanatory and commentary end-notes, featuring modifications and response to criticism as well as reference to later research. In 2006, at the anniversary for the original publication, the book was re- published as a 30^th Anniversary Edition featuring an additional preface. Furthermore, and obviously, the science of the Victorian Age is not automatically comparable to contemporary science.

The second problem of my initial approach was more personal than methodological.

Although I was aware of the pitfall of an overly ‘constructivist’ approach, and did not set out to contest the notion of objective knowledge, my reading was initially influenced by the unease that motivated my interest for this field of research in the first place, in the sense that the first drafts of my thesis were written with the aim of justifying the notion of scientific

‘trespassing’. An emotional reading aiming simply to challenge an ‘authority of science’

would constitute a framework in which Beer’s methodological concepts would function as weapons of destruction, quite the contrary to how they are employed in Darwin’s Plots. In consequence, the reading would rest on presumption, an in effect leaving the text unread.

Therefore, I had to work to disentangle my analysis from of the perspective arising from my original discomfort to enable an enquiry into the cause of this unease.

Although I abandoned the idea of performing a comparative analysis of Beer’s Darwin and Dawkins’s The Selfish Gene, I found that some of Beer’s textual approaches could still constitute a starting point of enquiry. In particular her observations concerning the

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Nilsen 14 anthropocentric nature of language and the challenge of tackling a language that is imbued with intention in describing a faceless process of evolution have proved productive for my reading. I have, however, not adopted Beer’s approach to authorship. Whereas her reading of the Origin takes into consideration Darwin’s personal journals, letters and notebooks in order to illuminate and support her reading, I have been concerned with the tension between the explicit intention of The Selfish Gene and the potential meanings that appear in a close- reading. This approach has been particularly fruitful due to the publication history of Dawkins’s book, where the added material of subsequent edition has introduced different in- text voices. However, this reading strategy too has been inspired by Beer, who distinguishes the active voice of the Origin as a “necessary methodological control.”³⁸

While Beer’s work has been a great inspiration, it cannot be said to be suited for addressing the scientific perspective that The Selfish Gene conveys. As due attention has been paid to the moral implications of the notion gene selfishness, I have not performed a particularly political, moral or ideological reading of Dawkins’s book in this thesis. Rather, I have tried to read the book on its own terms, and to take into consideration its status in the community of evolutionary biology. Leane observes the potential of public science to “act as forums for scientists to promote or defend rival views within a scientific field, or to engage, implicitly or explicitly, in cross-disciplinary debate.”³⁹ The fundamental and explicit scientific view that The Selfish Gene promotes is that of ‘gene selection’ as opposed to ‘group selection’

– the notion that natural selection benefits the ‘survival of the species’ and works for ‘the good of the species’. A key issue in the debate of the level of natural selection – group level, individual level and gene level – is the question of natural altruism, for instance of whether individual can be said put their own life to risk for the benefit of the group. As mentioned, I

38 Beer Darwin’s Plots 61

39 Leane Reading Popular Physics 4

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Nilsen 15 have not performed a moral reading, and thus, my thesis is not structured around the dichotomy of selfishness ≠ altruism. This subject will, however be addressed with reference to other readings of The Selfish Gene.

In the process of establishing the book’s ‘own terms’, I have studied works both by those of Dawkins’s peers who agree with his selfish gene theory, such as the biologist Alan Grafen, and opponents within the scientific community, such as Fern-Elsdon Baker, and Mary Midgley. Furthermore, I have examined how the gene concept of The Selfish Gene correlates to other gene conceptions. This is not to say that I have worked to evaluate the scientific contents in an effort to establish the truth-value of The Selfish Gene. This thesis is concerned with the act of scientific representation that the book performs. Scientific representation cannot, however, be regarded as situated outside of discourse, or outside of the culture of its time. Science is both a part of a common culture, and a distinct culture with its own criteria and conventions of representation and meaning, which I have, at least to some extent, paid heed to. At the same time, science and literature are two distinct disciplines, and it is the differences of the academic traditions that make the interplay between the two interesting. It has been a challenge to try and strike a balance between an overly critical reading on the one hand, and an overly sympathetic reading on the other, and rather make use of the tools of literary criticism in order to open up the text and investigate the effects of textual strategies.

One such textual strategy is that of narration: Greg Myers, Professor of Rhetoric and Communication at Lancaster University, finds that the mode of narrativity is a central aspect distinguishing popular and professional science writing:

The professional articles I study create what I call a narrative of science: they follow the argument of the scientist, arrange time into parallel series of simultaneous events all supporting their claim, and emphasize in their syntax and vocabulary the conceptual structure of their discipline. The popularizing articles, on the other hand, present a sequential narrative of nature in which the plant or animal, not the scientific

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Nilsen 16 activity, is the subject, the narrative is chronological, and the syntax and vocabulary emphasize the externality of nature to scientific practices.⁴⁰

The three ‘imaginary readers’ of The Selfish Gene introduced above illustrate how the book at once popularizes science for the benefit of the lay-reader and addresses an expert audience with new scientific perspectives. This duality, which I have categorized as ‘public science’, is reflected in the narrative strategies in the book: The opening of the argument introducing the gene is presented chronologically as a ‘narrative of nature,’ while the latter half of the book follows a ‘narrative of science’ introducing a series of models and examples, organized as illustrations of Dawkins’s argument. This argument, or narrative of science, is based in the concept of evolutionarily stable strategies (ESS),⁴¹ where Game Theory, often illustrated by the Prisoner’s Dilemma, is used in mathematical analysis of animal behaviour, working out ‘cost-benefit calculations’ for particular strategies, i.e. relatively stable patterns of animal behaviour. The central argument of The Selfish Gene is that natural selection favours strategies that benefit the survival of genes, rather than individual bodies or entire species.

Thus, the narrative of the gene can be said to constitute a fundament upon which the argument – the narrative of science – is developed. Thus, the two modes of narration are intertwined. Leane comments on the function of the narrative of nature:

[A]ssumptions (about the world, or about science) embedded in popularizers’

narrative structures may not be recognized as such. It is important, then, for critics not to dismiss the narrative conventions of popular science as only a kind of formal sugar- coating over the ‘hard’ scientific content, but to subject them to analysis.⁴²

40Myers, Greg, quoted in Swales, John, Genre Analysis: English in Academic and Research Settings (Cambridge Applied Linguistics) Cambridge University Press, 2002, (1990) 126 (Myer’s/Swales Italics)

41 A biological concept developed by John Maynard Smith in 1972

42 Leane, Reading Popular Physics 109

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Nilsen 17 In this thesis, I will analyze the narrative of nature, and considered how it may be said to function as a supporting component for the argument of selfish genes. Additionally, I shall also take into consideration a second scientific narrative: the Kuhnian notion of scientific development as a linear movement of progress.⁴³ I have also looked at other textual strategies in The Selfish Gene, such as the power of analogy and personification, which is a key component structuring the book. Along with an active voice guiding the reading, the structural device of personification can be said to urge a ‘willed suspension of disbelief’ on the part of the reader, which is reflected in the opening lines to the preface to the first edition of The Selfish Gene: “This book should be read almost as if it were science fiction. It is designed to appeal to the imagination. But it is not science fiction: it is science.”⁴⁴ This opening at once enters into a dialogue with the reader with an injunction to both believe and not believe – thus emphasizing the tension between the fictional devices and the scientific message of popularization.

IV. Thesis Outline

Chapter 1 takes Foucault’s article “What is an author?”⁴⁵ as its point of departure. After discussing how Dawkins may be seen as a reader of Darwin, I will go on to discuss Foucault’s concept of the author-function, before I move on to consider some different readings of and approaches to The Selfish Gene. With reference to a polemic between Dawkins and Mary

43 Kuhn, Thomas S: The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962), The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, London, 1996, which developed a perspective on the sociology of science

44 The Selfish Gene xxi

45 Foucault, Michel, “What is an Author?” (1969, English translation in 1979) From Modern Criticism and Theory, A Reader, ed. David Lodge, Longman, 1993 (1988) (All subsequent citations refer to this edition)

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Nilsen 18 Midgley, I will also establish Dawkins as a reader of his own book, and account for his concept of poetic science.

Chapter 2, entitled “The Language of Convenience and Displaced Agency in The Selfish Gene”, constitutes the first part of my close reading. This chapter is concerned with what I consider to be the fundamental structural strategies of the book, such as personification, narration and the gene-definition that The Selfish Gene operates with. The latter particularly regards the relationship between genotype, an individual’s set of genes, and phenotype, the genes’ realization in terms of physical traits. Furthermore, I will examine the representation of the body as ‘survival machine’, both in terms of its function and its effect.

In Chapter 3, “Reading Nature” I extend the perspective of my close reading. The first half of this chapter addresses the multiple voices of The Selfish Gene, which I will categorize as author-function, the reflexive narrator and the meta-narrator, with particular focus on their potential to exert ‘methodological control’. These categories are not meant to represent fixed entities, but different functions. From this starting point, I will show how the reader is addressed and situated in the text, and go on to argue that the multiple voices of the book appeal to an ‘ideal reader’. The focus of the second half of the chapter examines the meaning potential of analogy, and discusses how this meaning potential affects the construction of a

‘genetic rationale’

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Nilsen 19

Chapter 1: Reading The Selfish Gene

In 1976, a young Oxford biologist published a book called The Selfish Gene. To Richard Dawkins’ own surprise and sometimes alarm, it became widely discussed, often misunderstood, and highly influential.⁴⁶

1.1 What is an Author?

In his essay “What is an Author?” Foucault separates between scientific discourse and other discourses. The distinction is based in two aspects. One is that of the author-function, the function of the author’s name:

The author’s name manifests the appearance of a certain discursive set and indicates the status of this discourse within a society and a culture … [W]e could say that in a civilization like our own, there are a certain number of discourses that are endowed with the ‘author-function’ while others are deprived of it.⁴⁷

Foucault observes a reversal in scientific discourse: While medieval texts dealing with issues that we would now call scientific relied on author-name to guarantee truth, a reversal occurred in the seventeenth or eighteenth century, with the author-function fading away. Instead, scientific discourses were “received for themselves, in the anonymity of an established or always redemonstrable truth.”⁴⁸ The anonymity of the author can be said to represent and support the notion that science ‘speaks for itself’, that it exists outside of language. One

46 Introduction, Grafen, Alan and Mark Ridly Eds. Introduction to Richard Dawkins: How One Biologist Changed the Way We Think, Reflections by Scientists, Writers and Philosophers, Oxford University Press, Oxford, New York, 2007 (2006) xi

47 Ibid 202

48 Ibid 203

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Nilsen 20 expression of the scientific practice of writing outside of the author-function could for instance be the conventional use of the passive in scientific texts. However as I have shown above, the genre of ‘public science’ which Dawkins represents does not adhere to these conventions.

I will return to the author-function after having discussed another aspect that, according to Foucault, distinguishes scientific from other discourses, namely the concept of

“founders of discursivity”: “They are unique in that they are not just the author of their own works. They have produced something else: the possibilities and the rules for the formation of other texts.”⁴⁹ Founders of discursivity, then, are authors of works that provide a new approach or perspective, or even works that cause reactions leading to a different insight, providing a “possibility for something other than their discourse, yet something belonging to what they founded.”⁵⁰ Foucault uses Marx and Freud as prime examples of founders of discursivity, and contrasts them to scientific discourse: “Re-examination of Galileo’s text may well change our knowledge of the history of mechanics, but it will never be able to change mechanics itself. On the other hand, re-examination of Freud’s text, modifies psychoanalysis

…”⁵¹ Following this argument, re-examination of the scientific founders’ works cannot contribute to further research, because the original discourse becomes irrelevant in the course of scientific development. In other words, it seems that scientific truth relies on objective findings in research rather than the authority of the founder:

[O]ne defines a proposition’s theoretical validity in relation to the works of the founder – while, in the case of Galileo and Newton, it is in relation to what physics or cosmology is (in its intrinsic structure and normativity) that one affirms the validity of any proposition that those men have put forth.⁵²

49 Foucault, “What is an Author?” 206

50 Ibid

51 Ibid 208

52 Ibid 207-208

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Nilsen 21 In this perspective, science is seen as intrinsically progressive, in the sense that it is scientific progress, in terms of new findings and developments leading to increased knowledge that constitutes truth-value, rather than the founder of a specific discourse. Peter Baehr, in his work Founders, Classics, Canons (2002) notes that “It would appear, then, that in regard to the founding figure there is a recursive durability, a reflexivity, to ‘discourses’ that is typically absent in ‘sciences’.”⁵³ Following Baehr’s line of argument, the separation between founders of science and founders of discourse seems to rest on the assumption that scientific development is a progressive mechanistic event, where new perspectives of universal validity replace each other on the basis of scientific truths detached from the scientific work that originated the theoretical discipline. However, as I will demonstrate below, the concept of

‘founders of discourse’ is tractable also in scientific discourse. It is worth adding that Foucault did not see the differences between scientific and other discourses as categorical: “It is not always easy to distinguish between the two; moreover, nothing proves that they are two mutually exclusive procedures.”⁵⁴

Dawkins refers to himself as a Neo-Darwinist. Modern Neo-Darwinism traces back to the 1930s, when ‘the modern synthesis’ of genetic inheritance was developed by Haldane, Wright and Fisher, implementing theories from genetics in the field of evolutionary biology, or natural selection, known as Darwinism.⁵⁵ From this starting point, Hamilton and Fisher established a perspective on natural selection from what is understood as the gene’s-eye point of view, a concept which The Selfish Gene develops further.⁵⁶ Needless to say, the label Neo- Darwinism carries with it a reference to Darwin’s original work. This back-referring

53 Baehr, Peter, Founders, Classics, Canons: Modern Disputes over the Origins and Appraisal of Sociology’s Heritage, Transaction Publishers New Brunswick, New Jersey, 2002, 15

55 Elsdon-Baker, Fern, The Selfish Genious, Icon Books Ltd UK, 2009, 5-6

56 The Selfish Gene xvi

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Nilsen 22 corresponds to what Foucault describes as one of the characteristics of works by founders of discursivity:

[O]ne does not declare certain propositions of these founders to be false: instead, when trying to seize the act of founding, one sets aside those statements that are not pertinent, either because they are deemed inessential, or because they are considered

‘prehistoric’ and derived from another type of discursivity.⁵⁷

While Darwin had no clear-cut conception of genes or genetic inheritance, his proposition of natural selection was not seen as false after the appearance of genetics. Instead, the concept of natural selection has been extended so as to include the gene as its primus motor.

Additionally, Darwin had a speculative notion of pangenesis: “particles that preserve variations from generation to generation.”⁵⁸ The concept of pangenesis has, according to Elsdon-Baker, largely been ignored, or ’deemed inessential’, until recently,⁵⁹ but the somewhat ‘prehistoric’ genetic conception has not devaluated Darwin’s evolutionary theory as such. While Darwin was not the only one working on evolutionary ideas in the 19^th century,⁶⁰ his concept of natural selection has made him the father of modern evolutionary theory. Elsdon-Baker puts it like this: “[I] believe Darwin rightly has pride and prominence as the father of modern evolutionary theory. It was Darwin, and only Darwin, who had the vision, persistence and clarity of thought to turn it from a great idea into a comprehensive theory.⁶¹

The term Neo-Darwinism also seems to meet Foucault’s definition of a founder of discursivity, in that “one defines a proposition’s theoretical validity in relation to the works of the founder,”⁶² rather than in relation to the normativity of the discipline. One might also say

58 Elsdon-Baker The Selfish Genius 91

59 Ibid

60 See Ibid part 1 for a thorough survey of the history of evolutionary theory

61 Ibid 47

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Nilsen 23 that Darwinism is presented as the normativity of evolutionary theory. The founder as authority is detectable in The Selfish Gene: [T]he group selection idea is so deeply ingrained that Lorenz … evidently did not realize that the statement contravened the orthodox Darwinian theory.”⁶³ However, not only Neo-Darwinists, but also their opponents may refer to Darwin as founding father and authority. Elsdon-Baker quotes the biologists Jablonka and Lamb:

In evolutionary studies, because heritable non-genetic variations are often induced by the environment, we have to expand our notion of heredity and variation to include the inheritance of acquired variations, the once disparaged idea that was part of Lamarck’s theory. In a sense, we have to go back to Darwin’s original, pluralistic convictions.

Darwin, unlike many of his dogmatic followers, saw a role for induced variation in evolution. Today, in the light of newly discovered epigenetic mechanisms, Darwinian evolution should include descent with epigenetic as well as genetic modifications, and natural selection of induced as well as random variations. Certainly, it should not be reduced to ‘selfish genes’.⁶⁴

The appeal to Darwin in order to re-examine evolutionary ideas, corresponds to what Foucault describes as a necessity to turn “back to the origin⁶⁵”: “The return is not a historical supplement which would be added to the discursivity, or merely an ornament; on the contrary, it constitutes an effective and necessary task of transforming the discursive practice itself.”⁶⁶

The plea to re-examine Darwin’s theories in order to transform the discursive practice of evolutionary theory can be seen as necessitated by the power of definition held by Neo- Darwinists which Elsdon-Baker finds problematic: “Challenges to the Neo-Darwinian synthesis are sometimes represented as challenges to Darwinism. Similarly, Neo-Darwinists conflate their own ideas with Darwinism.”⁶⁷ This observation illuminates the aspect of reading which is intrinsic to all discourse: the act of focusing on certain aspects while

63 The Selfish Gene 8

65 Foucault “What is an Author?” 208

66 Ibid

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Nilsen 24 excluding those that do not seem pertinent, simply the act of interpreting. Elsdon-Baker sees the neo-Darwinian reading of Darwinian theory as problematic for several reasons. First, on a general level, that this kind categorization of evolutionary theory may function counter- productively: “[I]n embracing the idea of ‘Darwinism’ or ‘Neo-Darwinism’ rather than evolutionary theory, we are perhaps creating an intellectual straitjacket for ourselves.”⁶⁸ We could read this as a normative claim corresponding to Foucault’s notion of separating scientific discourses: Ideal sciences should be established in relation to the normativity of the discipline rather than in relation to its founder. Furthermore, the phrase Neo-Darwinian gives the impression of being a mere extension of the original Darwinian ideas. These ideas may, then, be made to encompass a wider meaning than there are grounds for. Elsdon-Baker is specifically concerned with the place of religion in the neo-Darwinian theory:

We clearly can no longer caricature the shift in thinking after the publication of On the Origin of Species as a leap from universal acceptance of ‘creationism’ to a battle to get evolutionary thought accepted … it implies a level of animosity between ‘religious thinkers’ and ‘scientific evolutionary thinkers’ which is both a misrepresentation and misleading.⁶⁹

In the opening passage of The Selfish Gene we get an impression of the ‘level of animosity’

between the two modes of thinking:

Living organisms had existed on earth, without ever knowing why, for over three thousand million years before the truth finally dawned on one of them. His name was Charles Darwin. To be fair, others had had inklings of the truth, but it was Darwin who first put together a coherent and tenable account of why we exist. Darwin made it possible for us to give a sensible answer to the curious child whose question heads this chapter. We no longer have to resort to superstition when faced with the deep problems: Is there a meaning to life? What are we for? What is man?⁷⁰

The problem, Elsdon-Baker points out, is that Darwinism becomes an altogether too inclusive category, for several reasons: one is that this portrayal of evolution does not separate between

68 Ibid 27

70 The Selfish Gene 1 (My italics)

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Nilsen 25 the ‘origin of species’ and the ‘origin of life’,⁷¹ another that it goes beyond what is normally accepted to be the parameters of science.⁷² However, the over-arching issue with the strong focus on the metaphysical impact of Darwinism is that it becomes much more dangerous to discuss problems regarding evolutionary theory publically, because critics may be seen as representing the ‘wrong camp’.⁷³

The consequences of this kind of either-or problem in relying on the founding authority of a discourse also become evident when attributed to Lamarckism, particularly with regard to the concept of inherited characteristics, as in the case referred to above, where two biologists criticized the concept of selfish genes and wished to ‘expand the notion of heredity’. If the Neo-Darwinian reading of Darwin is accepted as the only reading of evolutionary theory, then statements such as these may be labelled ‘anti-Darwinian’.⁷⁴ As Feldon-Baker shows, this is to some extent what is at stake in the neo-Darwinian discussion;

to establish the ‘true’ Darwinism. While a re-examination of Darwin’s texts will not change the course of evolution, it could change evolutionary biology theory and research.

In the context of the above discussion it is possible to establish Dawkins as a reader of Darwin. On this background, evolutionary representation in the Origin may also be relevant for analyzing the writings of Dawkins. However, Dawkins is, of course, also an author. But what is an author? While the above perspectives of Elsdon-Baker is mainly concerned with Dawkins as a critic of religion and with the somewhat antagonistic tone in much of his writing, there are, as we shall see, several other takes on Dawkins as an author. Foucault points out that

72 Ibid 168

73 Ibid 135

74 Ibid 242

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Nilsen 26 One cannot turn a proper name into a pure and simple reference. It has more than an indication, a gesture, a finger pointed at someone, it is the equivalent of description … The proper name and the author’s name are situated between the two poles of description and designation.⁷⁵

Description, e.g. biographical details, and designation: the attributes that a reader may assign the author, come together in the act of reading. This relationship is further complicated in The Selfish Gene which deviate from the conventions of scientific papers and use elements from fiction, or the essay, such as an active first person structuring the text. When performing a reading where the author is apparently homogenous to the first person speaking, the boundaries may become blurred between the ‘proper name and the individual named’, in this case also between the narrator and the author. Reading Dawkins, then, can be closely linked to the act of establishing the author-function; in fact, the act of reading Dawkins’ texts may become equal to the act of establishing the author-function:

[T]he author-function … does not develop spontaneously as the attribution of a discourse to an individual. It is, rather, the result of a complex operation which constructs a certain rational being that we call ‘author’. Critics doubtless try to give this intelligible being a realistic status, by discerning a ‘deep’ motive, a ‘creative power’, or a ‘design,’ the milieu in which writing originates. Nevertheless, these aspects of an individual which we designate as making him an author are only a projection, in more or less psychologizing terms, of the operations that we force texts to undergo, the connections that we make, the traits that we establish as pertinent, the continuities that we recognize, or the exclusions that we practice.⁷⁶

The author-function, then, is not an absolute figure; it is created by and in the process of reading. Elsdon-Baker’s portrayal of Dawkins as author-function can be recognized as a projection of a ‘deep motive’ of religion-criticism: “[Dawkins] has presented himself as standing at the vanguard of clear-thinking rational science, fighting against a swelling tide of fanatical delusionists.”⁷⁷. By other readers, the focus on Dawkins as author-function is his status as an eminent and revolutionary scientist. In the preface to the anthology with the

75 Ibid 200

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Nilsen 27 telling title: Richard Dawkins: How a Scientist Changed the Way We Think⁷⁸, edited by Dawkins’ former students, Alan Grafen and Mark Ridley, we find an example of the author- function as ‘creative power’: “We can think of no more fitting tribute to a figure so exactingly logical in science, so patiently lucid in promoting the public understanding of science, and so outspoken and clear-headed in the public sphere.”⁷⁹ Here the establishing of the author- function is directed at the scientific qualities of Dawkins’s work.

Daniel Dennett focuses on the philosophical qualities of Dawkins, thus creating a fundamentally different author-function:

[Dawkins] is just as leery (sic) of idle armchair speculation and hypersnickety logic- chopping as any hard-bitten chemist or microbiologists ... My high opinion of his philosophical method is hard for me to separate, of course, with my deep agreement with the conclusions and proposals he arrives at.⁸⁰

This quote illustrates not only the different constructions of the author-function, but also that the perception of the author will colour the reading in terms of what is found pertinent and representative, and what is excluded. Dennett here sees Dawkins as an eminent philosopher, but a construction of Dawkins as philosopher is not one-sided. Andrew Goatly performs a very different reading of the philosophical qualities of the author function:

According to Dawkins’ The Selfish Gene (1990) human behaviour can in fact be explained by the drive to pass on our genes ...

Selfish gene theory has been developed into sophisticated mathematical models, in an attempt to explain, or explain away, altruistic behaviour. The theory quite clearly echoes the economic and political philosophies of Reaganism- Thatcherism (Chase-Dunn and Gills 2003).⁸¹

78Grafen, Alan and Mark Ridley (eds) Richard Dawkins: How a Scientist changed the Way We Think, Oxford University press, 2007 (2006)

79 Ibid, Introduction xiii

80 Dennett, Daniel: “The Selfish Gene as a Philosophical Essay”, Grafen and Ridley 2007 (2006) 101-102

81 Goatly, Andrew, Washing the brain – Metaphor and Hidden Ideology John Benjamin’s

Publishing Company2007, 131

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Nilsen 28 The author-function is here projected as a political figure. The phrase ‘in an attempt to’

illustrates that the perceived author-function represents the intention of the text. Therefore, the political meaning potential of the book is seen as representative of the author-function.

The above examples do not necessarily represent an exhaustive representation of the author-function that the readers project to the text, nor would I here evaluate their approximation to the ‘real’ Dawkins. Rather they illustrate how a depiction of an author- function is never exclusive or all-encompassing, but depends on the perspective from which one reads.

As mentioned above, part of the difficulties in reading Dawkins’s works is to separate between the author-function and the bio-factual individual, due to the active first person voice that structures the texts. The separation is further complicated by Dawkins’s use of his own person to modify and control potential meaning. In relation to the quote above, and as an answer to similar criticism, Dawkins writes in an end-note to the second edition of The Selfish Gene:

I must add that the occasional political asides in this chapter make uncomfortable rereading for me in 1989. ‘How many times must this [the need to restrain selfish greed to prevent the destruction of the whole group] have been said in recent years to the working people in Britain?’ (p. 8) makes me sound like a Tory! In 1975, when this was written, a socialist government which I had helped to vote in was battling desperately against 23 per cent inflation, and was obviously concerned about high wage claims.⁸²

While the immediate function of this quote is to modify and contextualize the meaning of one particular analogy to human society in the book, the more general effect is that Dawkins as an individual is proven not to hold the political stance that he is seen as representing. Therefore, potential readings are restricted, and Dawkins’ personal vote and identity constitute the meaning-carrying guarantee. In consequence, the individual person, the author-function and

82 The Selfish Gene 268

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Nilsen 29 the first-person voice become intertwined, and the author can be said to contribute to his own designation.

Additionally, Dawkins also represents a strong public persona, probably in part due to his position as Charles Simonyi Professor for the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University (1995-2008), and the founder of the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science, and further because of his participation and creation of numerous popular TV-series on science, as well as his active role in public debate. As the above examples illustrate, Dawkins’ author-function may, then, consist of a myriad of components, all of which contributes to what Foucault refers to as “a projection, in more or less psychologizing terms, of the operation that we force texts to undergo.”⁸³ The different approaches to Dawkins’

author-function, usually supported by quotes and references, underlines what Foucault refers to when he describes the proper name as “situated somewhere between description and designation.”⁸⁴ The establishing of the author-function is descriptive in that it is supported by reference to other works by Dawkins, and designating in that it is, and must be, selective, particularly with regard to the range and variety of Dawkins’s work.

In my reading, I will try to avoid making a projected author-function the determining structural element, as it would imply assigning an intention to the Dawkins of 1976 that was not necessarily present. In order to deal with this issue, I will, in my close reading, discuss the multiple voices in the book: The narrator, the meta-narrator and the authorial presence. While these voices are intertwined, and to some extent overlap, I still find this approach constructive, because they can be said to fulfil different functions. Furthermore, a focus on the literary elements of the text will allow a reading with a focus on ‘what the text says about itself,’ without disregarding the scientific content. The author-function, then, will be Dawkins

84 Ibid 200

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Nilsen 30 The Writer, and I will not treat the active first person structuring the book as a direct expression of the individual. While I will pay heed to the intention of scientific communication, I will not aspire to represent the ‘real’ Dawkins. Rather, my reading represents one of several possible readings of The Selfish Gene. In the following, I will discuss a selection of readings focusing on different aspects of Dawkins’s book.

1.2 Reading The Selfish Gene

The “operations that we force texts to undergo, the connections that we make, the traits that we establish as pertinent, the continuities that we recognize, or the exclusions that we practice”⁸⁵ are not only derived from the construction of an author-function; they are also a consequence of the reader’s perspective. The question is then: are all readings equally valid and legitimate? And if not, which readings may be acknowledged as productive and which could be dismissed as irrelevant? These questions have been the core of the reception history of The Selfish Gene, and in the following I will discuss a selection of very different perspectives on the book in order to distinguish some of the problems connected to the issue of reading, or more importantly, of misreading.

In 1979, Mary Midgley published an article entitled “Gene-Juggling,”⁸⁶ dealing with the philosophical implications of The Selfish Gene. Her critique is based on the philosopher J.

L. Mackie’s implementation of the selfish gene theory in a philosophical framework. The much quoted opening line is concerned with Dawkins’ device of personifying genes: “Genes

85 Foucault “What is an Author?” 203

86 Midgley, Mary: “Gene-Juggling”, in Philosophy, Vol. 54, No. 210, Cambridge University Press on Behalf of the Royal Institute of Philosophy, October 1979

A Literary Critique of Richard Dawkins’s The Selfish Gene

Eng 350 Spring 2012 Helene Nilsen

Supervisor: Randi Koppen

Co-supervisor: Jan Reinert Karlsen Department of Foreign Languages

Popular Science – Common Ground

A Literary Critique of Richard Dawkins’s The Selfish Gene

Acknowledgements

Table of Contents:

Introduction:

Chapter 1: Reading The Selfish Gene